Chapter Three
~ Knox ~
The McKenzie living room was a sepia-toned shrine to functional comfort. Nothing matched, but every piece looked like it had survived at least three world wars and a barn fire.
I parked myself in the battered armchair that nobody else used, boots braced wide, elbows on the rests, hands steepled so my fingers didn't twitch and give me away.
Newt hovered at the threshold, as if there might still be time to reverse the last twenty-four hours and walk out of my orbit unscathed. He didn't. Instead he made a little show of tucking the hoodie tighter around himself, then tiptoed across the rug and folded into the chair opposite.
His knees stuck out past the edge. I hadn't realized he was that long in the legs. The rest of him was as compact as I remembered—shoulders drawn up, arms crossed tight, a neck that looked like it belonged to a heron or a kid who'd been through too many growth spurts in too few years.
He caught me watching.
I didn't look away.
He tried to, eyes bouncing from the mantle to the window to a spot on the wall somewhere over my left shoulder. He had the sort of face that wore emotion like a billboard, but right now most of what was on display was confusion and embarrassment, with a side of pain.
The swelling at the corner of his mouth had gone down, but the split had scabbed up ugly, and every so often he'd lick it as if he could taste the memory of whatever fist had put it there.
I'd made sure there wouldn't be a repeat. The odds were good that Luther was still nursing his own wounds, courtesy of a phone call I'd placed that morning to a guy I knew who owed me a favor.
I didn't plan to tell Newt that.
His lips parted, tongue darting to worry the injury again. I imagined that mouth on my cock and had to forcibly reroute the fantasy before it took over the room.
Fuck. Not now. Control yourself, soldier.
I took a slow breath through the nose, let my attention drift down the rest of him. He'd borrowed a pair of Harlow's sweatpants, rolled at the waist and still baggy as hell, but the material clung to his thighs in a way that made my hands tense up.
I clocked his posture—left knee higher than right, left hand gripping the hem, right hand bouncing a knuckle rhythm against his own jaw. Nervous energy, inefficiently directed. He was like a bird that couldn't decide if it wanted to fly or break its own neck.
He cleared his throat, realized he was about to speak, then chickened out and ducked his head.
I couldn't help it. I grinned, slow and mean, and watched him squirm. "You always this fidgety?" I said, finally.
He jerked his chin up. "Sorry."
"Don't apologize. It's an honest question."
He hesitated, then shrugged with one shoulder. "I guess I get—nervous. Sometimes."
I uncrossed my arms, stretching until the leather creaked. "You got a reason to be nervous?"
His eyes snapped up, startled. For a second, he looked like he wanted to run. Then he set his jaw, and something in him shifted, resolved. "No," he said. "I mean, not here."
"Good." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, dropping my voice to the register that made men listen whether they wanted to or not. "Because if you were, you'd tell me."
He nodded, mouth working as if he was mulling over how much to say.
There was a long, humming silence. He picked at a loose thread on the sleeve. I watched the way his fingers moved, delicate and fast, and imagined them tracing lines down my chest, my hips, the inside of my thigh.
I made a conscious effort not to shift in the seat.
Old habits.
He risked a glance up, caught my eyes, and didn't look away this time. I let the silence get heavier, let it build between us like smoke. He didn't flinch.
Progress.
I said, "You said you wanted to help out around here."
He nodded, a little too fast.
"Don't do that," I said.
"What?"
"Pace yourself. You're not on the clock here. You don't have to prove anything."
He went still. His hands dropped to his lap. "Sorry," he said, softer. "Habit."
I thought about calling him on it, decided against. Instead, I studied the set of his shoulders, the new and old bruises peeking above the collar of the hoodie, the raw line at his wrist that looked a lot like rope burn.
I filed it all away.
He shifted again, tucking one ankle beneath the chair, gaze fixed on the floor now. "You can ask, you know," he said. "About the—what happened."
I considered it. "You want to talk about it?"
He looked up, surprised. "I mean, most people just…"
"Most people aren't me," I said. "You don't owe me the story unless you want to tell it."
He let out a breath, shuddery. "Thanks."
I nodded, once.
He smiled at that, tentative, but real. It made his face go soft in a way I didn't expect, like a thaw in late spring. I felt something tighten in my chest and immediately squashed it.
"You're not what I expected," he said, after a while.
I cocked my head. "That so?"
"Yeah, I mean, everyone in town acts like the McKenzies are these—" He trailed off, then made a weird motion with his hands, like he was trying to sculpt the idea out of air. "I don't know. Forces of nature, or something."
"They're not wrong," I said. I kept my voice flat, but the smirk was there if you knew how to look.
He laughed, and the sound did something to me. I liked it. I wanted to hear it again, see what it looked like when his face wasn't half-bruised and tired.
I sat back, stretching my legs so they bracketed the space between us. He clocked the movement, and I saw the flash of something in his eyes—uncertainty, maybe, or anticipation.
Either way, it was good.
He said, "So what happens now?"
"Now," I said, "I make sure you're not a liability."
That got his attention. He sat upright, color high in his face.
"I'm not—"
I held up a hand. "It's not a judgment. Just a fact. You come into my house, you become my responsibility. That's how it works here."
He blinked at me. "You're very…"
"Direct?" I offered.
He nodded.
"It's easier that way," I said. "You want a place to hide out, you follow the rules. You don't want to, you can walk. No one's keeping you here."
He looked at the door, then at me, then down at the floor again. "I don't want to go back."
I relaxed a fraction, enough to let him see it. "Good," I said. "Because I'm not letting you."
He exhaled, long and slow, and when he looked up this time there was something steadier behind the blue. "Okay," he said. "I'll stay."
The edges of my mouth twitched, almost a smile.
"You hungry?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.
He shrugged, and my patience wore thin. "Look, I can read you, Newt. If you want something, just say it."
His cheeks went red. "Maybe some coffee. If that's okay."
"Stay put," I ordered, and strode to the kitchen, muscles loose and easy for the first time in a week.
When I came back, he hadn't moved. I handed him the mug. Our fingers brushed, and he jumped like he'd been tased. I locked eyes with him, let the moment linger a second too long.
He dropped his gaze, but not before I saw the flare of want.
I grinned. He might not know it yet, but he was already mine.
I settled back into the chair, sipped my own coffee, and let the weight of my stare pin him in place while he drank. Every so often, he'd look up and catch me watching, then glance away, like he was embarrassed to be caught thinking about what else my hands could do.
Good. Let him stew in it. Let him squirm.
Eventually, he finished the mug and set it down on the side table, hands still trembling just a little.
"You want to get out of the house for a bit?" I said. "I could use another pair of hands in the workshop."
He nodded, a little too eagerly, then stood and waited for me to lead the way.
I made a show of rising slow, stretching until the hem of my shirt rode up and the scars on my hip flashed in the sunlight. He noticed. He looked away, but not before I saw the way his pupils dilated.
I caught his wrist as we passed in the doorway, fingers loose but unbreakable.
He froze.
"If you need to stop, you tell me," I said. "Understood?"
He swallowed, throat working, then nodded. "Understood."
I let him go, and we walked out together, my shoulder brushing his as we cleared the hall. I didn't look back. I didn't need to. He followed, just like I knew he would.
The walk to the shop was short, but every step was an exercise in self-control. Newt kept pace a half-step behind, arms folded over his chest, eyes locked on the gravel as if the rocks might spell out the secret to his continued existence.
I didn't say much. Never felt the need to fill silence. The wind was sharp and dry, scented with pine and the distant musk of horse manure, but under that was the clinging resin of fresh-cut timber—my version of holy incense.
The shop sat near the main road, down the driveway from the house, a long two story building with windows clouded by sawdust. My brother Quiad’s apartment was on the top floor.
Clients came and went through the side entrance, never the front, a holdover from the days when my grandfather ran a side business out of the same space and liked to keep things off the books.
I pushed open the door and stood aside so he could enter first. Newt hesitated on the threshold, maybe expecting a trap, then darted in like a deer crossing a two-lane.
The air inside was dense, layered: cut wood, glue, drying shellac, oil, the faintest note of ozone from the old bandsaw's electric motor.
I closed the door, flipped on the overheads. Light poured down in slanted sheets, throwing every speck of dust into sharp relief.
The benches were chaos incarnate—one held the carved body of a guitar, another a set of cherrywood cabinet doors, another a half-finished crossbow I'd started for a client and left to gather a film of dust. Pegboards along the walls were crowded with tools, sorted by size and function, each one in its assigned slot.